According to comScore, the average Pinterest user spend 98 minutes per month on the site, compared to 2.5 hours on Tumblr, and 7 hours on Facebook. If you don’t count sites like Google+ or new Yahoo channels that have built in user bases, comScore’s data shows Pinterest would be the fastest site of any kind to hit 10 million monthly uniques in the U.S.

Meaningful comparisons are made among brands in the same industry/category, using the raw DFS score. the indexed DFS score can also give directional indication across industries (e.g. which industries as a whole are better in digital than others).

The parameters that go into the score were chosen mainly on the following criteria — that they are easy to obtain, easy to understand, AND straightforward to impact. For example if you have a low pages per visit parameter, then you impact that by adding more content pages to your site.

The Digital Footprint Score(tm) is a new multi-metric index that helps brand marketers assess their digital marketing activities and compare it in apples-to-apples fashion to other brands in similar categories.

It takes parameters from the following 4 key areas: 1) site, 2) search, 3) social, and 4) mobile. It can be used to inform digital strategy and digital marketing tactics — those tactics will impact these parameters and improve the brand’s digital footprint score.

It is deliberately focused on measurable actions created by users NOT the size of the audience to which the ad was delivered, as in the case of the following 2 old metrics.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_Rating_Point

Gross Rating Point (GRP) is a term used in advertising to measure the size of an audience reached by a specific media vehicle or schedule. It is the product of the percentage of the target audience reached by an advertisement, times the frequency they see it in a given campaign. For example, a TV advertisement that is aired 5 times reaching 50% of the target audience, it would have 250 (GRP = 5 x 50% –) i.e., GRPs = frequency x % reach. To arrive at your total Gross Rating Points, add the individual ratings for each media vehicle you are using. You can also calculate GRP by dividing your gross Impressions by the population base and multiplying the answer by 100. GRPs are also used by broadcasters to sell their advertising space to potential customers.

A related metric is TRP, or Target Rating Point, a measure of the purchased targeted rating points representing an estimate of the component of the targeted audience being reached by an advertisement.

I really like the Facebook Advertising system as it’s extremely easy to setup ads and yet I can easily target the exact audience that might be interested in reading my blog.

How Effective are Facebook Ads

I recently ran a short ad campaign on Facebook targeting users who are based in India, speak English and are working for tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Dell, Yahoo!, etc. Some 20k users met that criteria according to Facebook estimates.

The ad campaign was live for about 5 days and here are some numbers that will you an idea of how effective the ad was.

It was a CPC based campaign and since I had set my default bid slightly higher than what was suggested by Facebook, the ad did reach a large part of the audience. The ad made some 350,000 impressions across various Facebook profiles but the real surprising part is that only 18 people finally clicked on the ads. That’s like a 0.005% CTR with the average CPC at $1.18.

Maybe the ad would have been slightly more effective had I added an image to the creative or chosen a different demographic but performance of the recent campaign is obviously a bit disappointing. Here’re the numbers in detail:

With Motorola’s latest quarterly sales of 8.5 million, the former biggest phonemaker in the US lost its lead to Apple, who sold 8.8 million iPhones last quarter. A moment of reflection, please. [AppleInsider]

According to data collected by mobile advertising network AdMob, Android phones have surpassed the iPhone in mobile traffic—at least in terms of ads served to the devices, which is a pretty good measure for overall traffic. As mobile browsers account for more and more of our online time, it’ll be interesting to see how the OS distribution works out. [TechCrunch]

With the greater efficiencies of digital, the overall “pie” will shrink because fewer dollars are needed to achieve the same effect. In other terms — for every DOLLAR pulled out of traditional and general advertising, 20 – 50 CENTS is put back into “digital” channels and tactics. Thus the overall pie will continue to shrink while some parts grow and other parts shrink dramatically.

Total US TV and online advertising revenues dropped 12% in 2009, although online revenues independently grew, according to research from The Yankee Group.

TV Revenue Decline Worse than Expected
In 2009, the total US TV and online advertising market totaled $67 billion, compared to $77 billion in 2008. TV advertising, by far the largest portion of this combined market, was hit especially hard by reductions in spending during 2009.

The TV ad market declined 21.2%, from $52 billion to $41 billion, between 2008 and 2009. This was significantly more than the 4% (or roughly $2.1 billion) decline The Yankee Group originally forecast in June 2009. As highlighted below, a shift in consumer attention primarily drove the steep decline in the TV ad market.

TV’s Loss is Internet’s Gain
Internet advertising grew during 2009, as a result of consumers spending more time online and less time watching TV. Online ad revenues grew 8.3% between 2008, when they totaled $24 billion, and 2009, when they totaled $26 billion.

Media Consumption Dwindles
The total amount of time consumers spent on media per day actually declined 14.3% between 2008 and 2009. Consumers spent about 14 hours per day on media in 2008, but only 12 hours per day in 2009. Most of the decline in media consumption was represented by declining TV viewership.

Americans spent an average of three hours and 17 minutes per day consuming TV and video in 2009, compared to an average of four hours and 13 minutes a day consuming online content. In addition, average daily mobile phone use reached one hour and 18 minutes. Thus Yankee Group advises marketers and advertisers to increase their focus on online and mobile promotions.

Annual US Ad Spending Falls 12.3%
Total US advertising expenditures (including print, radio, outdoor and free standing inserts) fell 12.3% in 2009, to $125.3 billion, as compared to 2008, according to Kantar Media.

Digital Consigliere

Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.